The Postman Always Rings Twice
The Postman Always Rings Twice, novel by American master of hard-boiled fiction James M. Cain, published in 1934. It was adapted as a classic 1946 film, starring John Garfield and Lana Turner, and again as a 1981 film, starring Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange.
The Postman Always Rings Twice is narrated by its protagonist, Frank, a drifter and petty criminal who lands at a roadside diner outside Glendale, California, that is run by Nick Papadakis and his wife, Cora. Nick offers Frank a job, and, because he is attracted to Cora, Frank accepts. Frank and Cora soon begin a passionate and destructive affair. Cora’s petit-bourgeois aspirations involve murdering her “dirty” Greek husband and thereby “inheriting” his roadside café. The scheme they concoct is to make it appear that Nick fell in the bathtub and drowned, but when Cora hits Nick over the head, the electricity goes out and a policeman arrives, so the plan fails, with no one the wiser.
Frank wants to flee with Cora, but she wants to keep the diner, so they briefly break up. Eventually, though, Frank returns to the diner. Then they stage a car accident. Frank kills Nick and then steers the car off a cliff. The local prosecutor plays Frank and Cora off each other to obtain a confession, while Cora’s lawyer plays the insurance company against the prosecutor. Both Frank and Cora end up free, with the insurance money to allow Cora to keep the diner, but they have lost faith in each other, and the relationship becomes uglier. However, after the lawyer’s partner tries to blackmail them, they decide to get married and plan a happy future together—until Frank gets into a car accident in which Cora dies, and he is convicted of having murdered her.
This hard-boiled masterpiece is a both a doomed gothic romance and an account of the grim conditions of life in Depression-era California. Cain asks to what extent his protagonists, Frank and Cora, are able to act independently of the larger sexual, political, and economic forces that appear to determine their lives. Frank’s self-knowledge is severely limited; although he would like to see himself as unattached and free, he quickly becomes embroiled in a relationship with Cora. Bereft of all morality, Frank readily agrees to assist Cora in her murderous plans. As Frank and Cora turn on each other, both are placed at the mercy of the law, which is shown to be even more amoral and skewed than the two lovers. The novel’s ending shows human existence, and indeed happiness, to be both fleeting and arbitrary.
The novel was hugely popular and saw numerous adapations. Cain’s cinematic influence extends well beyond adaptations of this novel, and it is hard to imagine the Coen brothers, for example, without him.